ASMITA JAISWAL

M ARCH, FY – 2022-2023
SUB – ELECTIVE- INDIAN URBANISM
ARTICLE – TOPOGRAPHY - A NATURAL BARRIER, OR A WAY FOR URBAN ORGANISATION
The shape of the earth is altering over time as man's evolution takes shape. But by modifying nature,
man is posing problems for himself. A steady accumulation of small amounts of work over huge area is
how nature usually works. Man's work, including structures and earth forms, is locally concentrated, in
comparison. In the past, only a limited degree of landscape change was possible due to human power
and available technology.

They suggest a new discipline, so they are important as design determinants still. Yet at the same time,
city form, city size, and city location factors have been, and will be, even more flexible; when the
freedom did exist before—flatland—man was left on his own to devise new formal patterns, a self-
imposed restriction to achieve an ordered environment.

Cities that are located on or close to steep topography adapt to their environments using a range of site-
specific tactics.

Urban forms were controlled by land forms in form, size, and location until the industrial revolution. Due
to the clear importance of some landforms, they were expressive of the land features for a range of
reasons. The same reasons why they are not today.

One of two types appears to be the urban site! First, those with three-dimensional characteristics—
those locations with notable natural land features! They already have a form; second, those with two-
dimensional character—flat land. Hills, mountains, bluffs, ravines, buttes, valleys, etc. The only time they
get three-dimensional (form) character is when objects are placed on them.

A land's natural features therefore include unlimited potential changes! A constant point of datum is
incorporated by expansive flat land.

A city is a dramatic landscape event! The visual impact when buildings accumulate a new art of
relationships and organizations becomes possible with the terrain configuration on which they
accumulate. Our original goal is to manipulate the town's elements in order to have an impact on
emotions.

The delicate equilibrium between urban form and topographic morphology is disturbed at the edges of
many fast growing cities. Dwells exactly in this incompatibility, an unimaginable defiance of nature.

Suburban development is unaffected by this physical barrier and is made possible by mining scale
"mountain cropping" operations as it continues to advance into the nearby foothills.

Modernism, ecological planning, and traditional urban design are three types of urban models.

First, modern urbanism sought to reconstitute cities above the ground on pilotis designed to enable the
land to flow unimpeded beneath.

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Second, ecological planning was more objectionable, prescribing where development should not occur,
such as on steep slopes.

Third, the traditional urban design paradigm that is currently in vogue focuses on restoring the essential
formal elements of pre-modern urbanism. The foundation of this model is the massing of structures and
landmarks, as well as the legibility of streets in relation to networks of both movement and lines of
sight. Traditional urbanism works best on flat areas since historically, cities have been built along
waterways. Topography is frequently positioned in urban design plans as a non-urban "other" that takes
the shape of a park or natural feature where it does exist.

Even though the proposals varied and the wording was a little different. The common perception
evolves with one clear theme: man has not learned to respect the surface of the earth, common to all
cities but also possibly providing a particular character. They are afraid of the challenge man must
accept or reject in relating the two physical elements, the city and the land, so that the topography is
not lost in the growing wave of worldwide artificial urbanism. They acknowledge that it is the one factor
that has the potential to give a city a uniqueness, a theme, and that the quality of sensitivity is not
periodical nor does it jeopardize the mania for efficiency by brute force.

Not an obstacle, topography should be a design consideration.

Before we convert our topography into one spreading mass of low-grade urban tissue, under the
delusion that because is we accomplish this degradation with the aid of bulldozers, is atomic piles, and
electronic computers, we are advancing is civilization, we might ask what all this implies in terms of is
the historic nature of man in his use of topography of a is design element.

Many aspects of cities can benefit from modernism, ecological planning, and traditional urban design.

These include organising urban cores, preserving ecologically valuable areas, increasing community inter
action, and integrating infrastructure.
These concerns tend to emerge as a byproduct of other research in specific disciplinary arenas, such as h
istory, biology, ecology, landscape architecture, architecture, urban planning, and urban design.

Responses tend to be polarized between the implicit position that this type of development should be
halted entirely and site-specific experiments that address individual typological situations apart from the
overall urban structure. As cities continue to grow in size due to population growth, they may need to
expand

The argument for more topographically responsive suburban design is divided into three parts: (1)
outlining the post-world war 2 transformations that have driven the suburban benching phenomenon;
(2) articulating the inherent value of retained topographic form; and (3) investigating how the key
building blocks of suburbia can be reinterpreted to achieve more topographically responsive suburban
morphologies.

Leveling out a piece of land when setting up a camp represents a primal act of inhabitation; for aeons, le
velness has allowed humans to gather easily around a cooking fire and sleep comfortably.

Cutting and filling does not erase or create earth, but rather carves functionality from its ruggedness.

1. A scarcity of available flat land

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The scarcity of suitable flat land for construction adds to the pressure to develop steep terrain that was
previously considered off-limits due to the prohibitive cost-engineering challenges of preparing this land
for development.

Because a concurrent reduction in residential densities at the metropolitan core frequently accompanies
growth at the periphery of cities, this process is more complex than internal population increases
exerting pressure on 'full' cities to expand outwards. This 'hollow-city' phenomenon can manifest itself
in a variety of ways.

2. Increase in building footprints

The simultaneous decrease in actual population per dwelling mirrored the increase in physical living spa
ce.

3. Reduction in the size of building plots

A proportional decrease in average plot sizes exacerbated the significant historical increase in suburban
housing footprints.

4. Ratios of plot coverage and indoor/outdoor continuity

Plot coverage ratios have increased as a result of expanding dwellings and shrinking plots (percentage of
a plot covered by buildings.

5. Standardized models and technology

Increased land values and more efficient mining scale earth-

moving techniques enabled previously unprofitable sites to be levelled for suburban development.

Planners and designers can avoid destroying the existing landscape by "studying the landform and
building in sympathy with it."

1. Surviving vegetation

It has been demonstrated that retaining vegetation in the suburban context is an important source of
faunal habitat, floral biodiversity, and human amenity.

2. Persistence of natural soil processes

Over geological timescales, the substrata of natural landforms undergo leaching and sorting processes.
The artificially reformed soil associated with suburban benching, on the other hand, is unratified. This
has implications for a variety of soil-specific criteria, including soil stability, fertility, and ground water
quality.

3. The phenomenological significance of the 'rough' landform

Natural terrain's inherent complexity and variation has inherent value in terms of how humans
physically, psychologically, and creatively interact with their environment.

4. Topography's orienting value

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The underlying topography has a significant impact on how city dwellers map and orient themselves in
their surroundings. Landform is important in shaping the legibility of the urban environment, according
to kevin lynch (1960, 96-97). Lynch observed that when people navigate the city, they cognitively endow
their route with a sense of directional differentiation, for which gradient or slope is a significant
underlying influence. Certain types of natural terrain have this topographical gradient built in.

Suburban morphology is made up of three essential components that operate at distinct and
interconnected scales: (1) buildings, (2) plot parcels, and (3) urban layout. This section establishes initial
operating parameters for reimagining suburban design in more topographically responsive terms, using
these three scales to frame discussion.

1. Building technology and typology

Individual houses serve as the foundation for suburban development.

Individual dwelling decisions are replicated en masse and reverberate throughout the overall structure
of the suburb.

As a result, topographically responsive approaches to suburban design rely heavily on building

technology and typology.

2. Diversity of lot sizes and housing types

Initially, the preference for uniformity and repetition in subdividing land was preferred.

The equal division of lots when parceling off land suited the Cartesian idea of space as inert and
uniform, as well as emerging societal ideals of equality.

3. Street and block layout

Plan-view layout of streets and blocks historically, the identity of suburban developments has been
largely determined by the plan-view layout of streets and blocks.

The age of a suburb can be determined by its street layout, which typically reflects the dominant formal
agenda of the time. Suburban layouts typically reflect trade-offs between yield economics (maximizing
return on investment) and sound urban form principles such as connectivity, community, legibility, and
access to transportation, commerce, and public open space.

Many of the India’s most topographically expressive cities were designed to take advantage of the
strength of their underlying geomorphologies, the expansionary pressures that many hilly cities face
reverse this relationship. Suburban peripheral expansion is increasingly encroaching on steep terrain,
driven by demand and an apparent lack of options. In this environment, where industrial earthmoving
techniques continue to facilitate unmodified flat-land suburban morphologies regardless of site, the
standard twentieth-century urban models of modern planning, ecological planning, and traditional
urban design have little influence.

As a result, highly engineered 'benched' landscapes of flat building pads and high retaining walls or
embankments are created.

Despite the fact that levelling land is an ancient component of place making, doing so on the scale of an
entire suburban development has profound effects on the biophysical and psychological environment.

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The loss of existing vegetation and soil profiles, as well as the phenomenological roughness and
orienting features inherent in natural topography, are all negative consequences.

MAJOR THEMES

These were not uncommon combinations. The first three of these, the introvert, the extrovert, and the
random, have been the most expressive in relating the man-made urban form to the landscape features.
The military was most appropriate on level land due to its discipline, but it was not limited to it.
Landforms can give the overall urban form or its parts a definite schematic orientation; others are
combinations of these basic themes.

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 ORIENTATION

The sense of orientation will be strong if there is logic in the articulation of a city's anatomy and if that
articulation is visibly evident. A city can be confusing even to the point where it arouses a high degree of
frustration, anxiety, and the feeling of being lost if there is logic but little or no visible articulation. The
prime device for improving orientation is the logic of arrangement and its visible evidence, achieved
through design. Signs are third-party devices. Where signs are over-relayed on, they may add to the
confusion or go unheard.

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This variable morphology can be calibrated to the nuances of local topography using modern digital
mapping and modelling techniques. The trade-off of street-scale uniformity, which has been a defining
feature of planned urbanism throughout its history, is a significant barrier to this type of innovation. As a
result, the resulting urbanism is unlikely to meet all of the traditional criteria of urban design. Through
another lens, topographically calibrated urbanism may contribute to the emergence of "good
scruffiness" in the suburban context (Gleeson 2006). In this context, scruffiness can be viewed as a
physical manifestation of topographic complexity rather than an inconvenient truth to be engineered
away.

Realizing these enduring criteria within the realities of today's suburban context necessitates a holistic
and trans-disciplinary approach that spans the fields of design, planning, construction technology, site
engineering, ecology, and real estate.

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